Open
- General, Indigenization, Decolonization, Reconciliation, Instructional / Course Design, Instructional Strategies, Open
Taking a Fresh Approach to the Course Design Institute
[social_share/] [social-bio] For more than a decade, the Gwenna Moss Centre for Teaching and Learning (GMCTL) has offered the Course Design Institute (CDI). Throughout the CDI, facilitators from the GMCTL work with instructors on developing or redeveloping a course. We go through learning about your students, writing learning outcomes, choosing teaching strategies, developing assessments, and putting it all together through constructive alignment and the blueprinting of your course. While the CDI had been an intensive four full-day experience within one week, a few years ago we revamped it to offer it in a “flipped” mode, with participants meeting face-to-face three half days over three weeks, plus completing activities and posting…
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WikiProjects, Article Importance, and Article Quality: An Intimate Relationship (1/2)
By John Kleefeld [social-bio] In a previous post, I wrote about how WikiProject Medicine acts as a forum for determining the priority (also called importance) of specific health-related Wikipedia articles and assessing their quality (also called class). More generally, these three concepts—WikiProjects, article importance, and article quality—are crucial for instructors and students to understand if they seek to use course-based assignments to improve Wikipedia. I will address each of them in turn. WikiProjects A WikiProject comprises a group of collaborators who aim to achieve specific Wikipedia editing goals, or to achieve goals in a specific subject or discipline represented in Wikipedia. An example of an editing type of project is…
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Wikipedia’s Gender Bias – and What Your Students Can Do About It
By John Kleefeld [social-bio] Every system has its biases, and Wikipedia is no exception. A common criticism of Wikipedia is its male bias. Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia, agreed with the criticism after it conducted a 2011 survey indicating that up to 90% of editors identified as male. This is a problem for a non-profit organization whose mission is “to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content … and to disseminate it effectively and globally.” The mechanisms for the gender bias are various, complex, and the subject of several studies, recently summarized by two New York researchers. They may include the code-heavy interface, called…
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The Wikipedia Manifesto
By John Kleefeld This post has been updated to correct some initial errors. A spectre is haunting academia—the spectre of Wikipedia. And while there was a time when all the old powers would have entered into an alliance to exorcise this spectre, a worldwide community of educators is now taking a radically different approach: they’re assigning students the task of editing and writing Wikipedia’s sprawling content, and giving them academic credit for doing so. In the process, they’re turning students from indiscriminate knowledge consumers to savvy knowledge creators. At the same time, they’re building an open-access and up-to-date storehouse of knowledge that, in certain areas, already rivals traditional reference works.…
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Faculty Fellows Playing Key Roles at GMCTL
[social_share/] [social-bio] The Gwenna Moss Centre for Teaching and Learning (GMCTL) has, for the past 3 academic years, had GMCTL Faculty Fellows. These roles are filled by members of faculty who set aside up to 1/2 day of their time per week to contribute to teaching and learning related work with and through the GMCTL. The Centre and the university benefits hugely from the contribution of these fantastic Fellows whose contribution is planned to align with their particular expertise and experience as well as university priorities. Their work also assists in keeping the GMCTL services informed by and in alignment with the needs and interests of those we serve. Below…
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Teaching Students About Research: Open Data = Quality Data with Easy Access
[social_share/] [social-bio] By Carolyn Hoessler When we teach students research skills and ways of approaching being a researcher, we know that research is more than just plugging in numbers or following a script. In a statistical analysis, being able to select the variables to use (and not use) and the analysis to answer the question is as important as running the analysis. We want students to design their own questions and analysis. The challenge though is where to get appropriate data easily and ethically? At the U of S, we are in luck! Our librarians have identified several key Open Data sources: Canadian Open Government Data http://libguides.usask.ca/c.php?g=16466&p=91079 Site…
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Open Pedagogy: Using OER to change how we teach
[social_share/] [social-bio] There has been a considerable increase in the number of courses assigning open rather than commercial textbooks at the University of Saskatchewan. During the 2014-2015 academic year, there were approximately 300 students enrolled in three courses using open textbooks. This year more than 2,650 students are enrolled in the at least 20 courses that have open textbooks as the assigned resource. Since the university started promoting and tracking the use of open textbooks in 2014, this use has resulted in students at the U of S saving close to $400,000 on textbook costs. The benefits of using open textbooks and other open educational resources (OER) instead of commercial…
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Why Consider Open Educational Resources?
[social_share/] [social-bio] Sessions on this topic will be held during the Fall Fortnight: Open Educational Resources (Monday August 22, 2016 from 9-9:25 AM) – Register Using and Adapting Open Textbooks (Wednesday August 24 from 1-2:30 PM) – Register There has been a lot of talk around the University of Saskatchewan during the past year about the use of open educational resources (OER), specifically open textbooks. During the 2015-2016 academic year, approximately 900 students benefited from the use of these textbooks instead of traditional commercial textbooks, saving the students approximately $90,000 overall. We expect that number to increase during the 2016-2017 academic year as more instructors have indicated that they will…
- Assessment and Evaluation, Curriculum Development, Educational Technology, General, Graduate Education, Inclusivity, Indigenization, Decolonization, Reconciliation, Instructional / Course Design, Instructional Strategies, Open
Gearing Up With Fall Fortnight 2016
[social_share/] [social-bio] “Happy New Year!!” That is how I think of September and the new school year. This often coincides with a strong pull to stationary stores, tidying my office, organizing my supplies, reading new books, and pulling out sweaters and warm socks. Gearing up for the Fall Term is exciting. There’s often anticipation, hope, renewed energy for trying new things and looking forward to tweaking things I tried last year. I think about taking a class. There are new “school” clothes, crisp mornings, and longer shadows when I head for home. All of that is bundled together as the new term starts. I think about the new faculty, staff,…
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Open Now: The USask Open Textbook Authoring Guide
[social_share/] [social-bio] By Jordan Epp, Instructional Designer, Distance Education Unit (DEU) The adoption and adaptation of open textbooks at the U of S has been an organic process up until this past year, with faculty and departments independently making use of open textbooks and resources to fulfill their own course needs. In 2015 the U of S announced the Open Textbook Creation/Adaptation Fund managed by the GMCTE. At that time the Distance Education Unit’s (DEU) Instructional Design (ID) Team was tapped on the shoulder to officially support these funded activities as well as the growing number of grassroots developments taking place on campus. The DEU’s busy ID team helps design,…